


You Oughta Know

by adjovi



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-12 22:39:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16004765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adjovi/pseuds/adjovi
Summary: Niffin Alice POV from when she was trapped inside Quentin circa S2.





	You Oughta Know

It was so precious that Quentin thought he was going to get some sleep tonight. Tormenting him in the library had been fun, trying to get him to slip up in front of the others. Now, here, alone in his room, with just the two of them, she could really ramp up the taunting.

 _”Second verse, same as the first! I’m Henry the eighth I am, Henry the eighth I am, I am—“_ Why mess with a classic? Quentin jammed a pillow over his face.

“Would you please just fucking _stop_?” His voice was muffled, but she could still hear the desperation.

“Oh, Q. You know how to make me stop.” She giggled. “Just let me out, just a little bit. I’ll be _so_ good. I promise.”

He threw the pillow in her general direction. “No, Alice. I already told you that’s not gonna happen.”

She sat on the edge of his bed, nearest to him, leaning in lasciviously. “So. Tell me, Q. Who’s in your spank bank these days?” She walked her fingers over the bedspread towards his leg. “Julia?” She waited a beat, tsk-ing her tongue at him. “What? Too broken?”

“Fuck off!” She could tell she hit a nerve by the way his face screwed up in pain. Oh, Q, you wear the ouchy bits so close to the surface, just begging to be hurt.

“Hmm” She leaned back next to him, pillowing her head in her hands with her elbows akimbo, settling in, ankles crossed over one another. “Me? I mean, my tits alone.” She rolled over onto her side. “Margo? If I didn’t need your body, I would pay good money to see that bitch split you in half, Oh!” She leaned in, placing her hands over his knees. “Please tell me it’s Eliot!” She made moaning noises. “Oh, Quentin, oh, your ass is _so_ tight.”

“ _Fuck_!” He rolled away from her, grabbing a bottle of sleeping pills off the nightstand, dry swallowing two. “This will shut you up.” He laid back staring at the ceiling.

She got in at least another five verses before he fell to sleep.

***

“Oh my God, yes.” A bank robbery? Fuck yes. FUCK yes. “You say yes.”

***

_Well hello there._

“Hey, whatcha doing?” Eliot was trying for feigned indifference, she could tell; but he was always watching, though. So was she, watching him, watching _him_.

“Uh.” Quentin downed another shot. “Trying to get as fucked up as fast that I can.” He poured another shot, tipping his head back and draining the glass.

“Ah. So, you have goals. I can get behind that.” Eliot smiled at him, briefly, before making his way to the bar. “But, you don’t have to drink that rot gut. Let me provide you with a more sophisticated means of fucking yourself up.”

Eliot was carefully mixing a little of this, a little of that. Not understanding that Q only wanted the fastest means possible towards obliteration. She should let him sleep, she realized, if he was to be of any use. But still, she was so fucking bored. Maybe if she let him seduce Eliot, or more realistically, _be_ seduced. Watching Quentin do anything beyond self-loathing and jerking one in the shower would be marginally more stimulating. She had actually seen it once before—and, Eliot fucking Quentin was infinitely more interesting than watching Quentin wallow. It was all about averages, at this point.

“Look at him. Trying to impress you. You think maybe you’ll wear his letterman jacket, hold his hand?” Alice laughed, high pitched and mean, tone going dead on the end. “Quentin and Eliot. Sitting in a tree. F-U-C-K—“

 _”Shut up!”_ he whispered urgently, stealing a look to see if Eliot noticed.

Eliot looked up from whatever concoction he was creating. “You say something?”

Quentin scrubbed his hands over his face. “No. I. No.”

“Well, here. Try this.” Eliot handed Quentin a glass of something way too fancy, dropping down next to him on the couch, holding his own glass in salute. Quentin clinked his glass against Eliot’s, then shotgunned the whole thing, much to Eliot’s obvious dismay. “Right.” He pushed the bottle of shitty whiskey back towards Q. “Let’s just stick to the bottom rail, shall we?”

Quentin burped, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sorry. I. Sorry. I mean, that was good.”

“Hmm.” He watched speculatively as Q picked up the bottle and took a long pull, leaning back to getting a better appraisal. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?”

Quentin folded a bit in on himself, running his hands through his goddamned greasy hair. “No. I mean. It’s a shitty plan and we are probably going to fail, but—“

“Your confidence is overwhelming.” Eliot’s tone was dry and yet still managed to be flirty. He was a fucking masterclass.

“Tell me, Q. And be honest because you know I’ll know if you’re lying.” Alice circled around the couch like a shark, pacing in front of him. “Did you like it better when he was fucking your mouth, or your ass?”

“Uh.” Quentin let out a shuddering breath, face going red, turning away from Eliot. He pulled another long swallow from the bottle.

“Q?” Eliot placed a careful hand on his shoulder, squeezing just the once.

“You know, it makes so much sense, now. Wasn’t your first time around the cock, was it?” She was almost giddy; he looked like he was about to cry. “Was that why you needed a tutorial to get me to the big O? You needed a goddamned map to find my clit?” She leaned down, getting right up in his face. “Oh, he wants you, Q. You should see his face, how much he wants you.“ If she were being honest, Eliot just looked concerned, like he was actually _worried_ , with real, actual feelings and shit. This was the kind of crap she expected from Quentin. Gross. What a fucking disappointment.

When she had been human, the fucking plastic-edged safety scissors that had shallowly cut out her heart, that had _broken_ her so completely, was that Quentin had betrayed her with _Eliot_. Interestingly, she didn’t blame Margo—emotion magic and a completely fucked up situation where they all thought they would die had been explanation enough. And, she had never sensed anything between them. But Eliot? Fuck Eliot. He had made no secret of the fact that he had wanted Quentin from the very beginning, and she felt like he had taken advantage of the first open opportunity and exploited the shit out of it. And that? _That_ she could not forgive. She resented that it had shook her human self to her core, seeing the passion between the two of them that had been bubbling on the surface all along. She had been willing to overlook the touches that had lingered too long to be labelled strictly platonic, the wordless looks they’d shared, rationalizing them in her head as some weird bond between fast friends that she was too socially fucked up to completely understand. But, she had excused this because he was _with_ her; that was enough. Seriously fuck the both of them to hell. She literally didn’t have time to waste on their will-they-or-won’t-they bullshit. The chance to make Eliot think Quentin was rejecting him? Fucking delicious.

Quentin abruptly stood, grabbing the bottle as he went, wobbling a little on unsteady legs. Fucking lightweight. “You know, I really should—“

Alice sneered. “Oh, come on, you pussy. Don’t deny me the only real entertainment—“

Quentin just ignored her, taking the stairs two at a time. He was sucking on the bottle like it was water. He face-planted on the bed in all his clothes, bottle slipping from his fingers to the floor, glugging and pooling in a widening circle, soaking into the carpet. Fucking great. Weak piece of shit.

***

Of course, they almost completely fucked up the bank heist, ending with an almost dead Penny and a totally dead clay Eliot, _there goes that line of torment_ , but she considered it an unmitigated personal success. She had finally found an angle to leverage thirty minutes in the driver’s seat. It was nowhere near enough, but it was a start, a toe in the door. She owned his ass now.

***

She had suspected Sunderland to have some hidden kinks; luckily for her it was medieval eunuch porn, which really, Pearl? You are one charmingly nasty weirdo. Her collection included several illuminated texts of the variety she was looking for—clues hidden in the margins. And—fuck. Time’s up. At least she laid out enough breadcrumbs to lead him to the wrong conclusions.

***

There were _things_ going on around her, but she couldn’t really be bothered to notice, now that she was getting closer and that fool had allowed her to drive. Blah Blah Eliot’s soul trapped in his golem. She could begrudgingly admit that shadeless Julia was mildly interesting, killing trees and leaving chaos in her wake. However, the idiot brigade was cooking up some plan to find a demigod to trap Reynard, and _there_ it was. She was able to bump driving time up to a full hour.

The AnglerBeast had been a little tricky to track down, even trickier was finding its Kryptonite: the ebony dagger blessed by the tears of three blind Ugandan nuns. Had to blow a couple of hours on researching that one—lucky for her, she found a collector just north of Pittsburgh.

The shop was a stand-alone building on the side of a busy highway, across from a standard-issue suburban strip mall, complete with a cell phone repair store and a vape shop called “Smoker’s Paradise”. The building was red, shaped like a small barn, and the writing on the side was in a script that would be more at home on a saloon in Tombstone but simply read “Western Wear”. She was in a part of the country where sports jerseys and ball caps were the preferred uniform, not the Wrangler jeans and cowboy hats that were advertised within. Yet, the store had been a mainstay for the last thirty years, and there was even a Reddit thread dedicated to conspiracy theories as to what the business was fronting, running the gamut from the mafia to drug dens. She knew the truth.

A small bell dinged announcing her entrance, and the smell of tanned leather filled her nose. The proprietor, Dennis Miller, not the comedian, but instead a lesser Grappler demon marauding around in a stolen human’s form, strode from the small office at the back of the room, all wide smiles and an even wider ten-gallon hat. “What can I do you fer, pardner?” He drawled in an accent that was decidedly not local.

Alice rolled her eyes, sucker punching him in nose. Her research had revealed this was his pain center, so she easily knocked him out with one blow, shaking Q’s fist in pain, a reminder of not only his innate mortal weakness but that she was on the clock. She hopped over his prone body to catch the office door before it snicked closed. She would have been able to open it, but time was of the essence. She ran her fingers over the back wall, feeling the release trigger and the wood-paneling slid apart like an elevator door. She walked into a large warehouse, all TARDIS-y bigger on the inside, with shelves upon shelves of magical items. She could _feel_ the magic roiling off of them, her skin itching with desire. She wished she could do _any_ magic at this point, wasting precious time she didn’t have, running her eyes over the objects until she found what she had come for. She scrambled up the shelves, grateful for once of Quentin’s unassuming stature which made the climb easy, grabbing for the dagger. She jumped down from the shelf, running back out the door. It was a shame she didn’t have more time--there was some truly insane shit here. She would come back once she was free.

***

Torturing the AnglerBeast had been the first real _fun_ that she had in a forever, and she was able to discern the last known sighting of Friar Joseph. She Rube Goldberged a niffin lure in an old house in Dublin, relying on Quentin’s dumbass to set it off. Auspiciously, his stupidity was a chronic condition, and reverse psychology worked like a charm.

“You? With me?” Friar Joseph chuckled, his tone infuriatingly full of pity. “You can’t even get out of this shoddy little Magician. How smart, how able could you be? How could you help me with anything worthwhile?”

And just like that, he was gone. All of her hard work trying to find him had been for naught. All because she was trapped inside stupid fucking Quentin Coldwater. Her anger boiled over. “The sound of your voice, your breath, your body, your mind, your weakness, I can’t stand it!” She felt something yield inside him, bent taut to the point of breaking, his weak human form buckling from the intensity of trying to hold a niffin inside. This wasn’t sustainable. If she didn’t find a way out soon, he would die, taking her with him.

***

Well, fuck. “Get out of here, right now!” Fucking Penny.

***

They had thrown him into a dungeon, hilariously chaining him by the ankle. They really didn’t need to double down on the security—he was barely upright at this point. He was dying; she didn’t need the magical once over to tell her that. She was getting desperate. Plus, they were stuck there next to a werewolf who was pissing on the walls. She was truly in hell.

Ah, hello there plot twist. She wished she had more _time_ to savor this. To drink in Julia, the OG owner of Q’s little boy heart. She could mine the other woman’s memories of his childhood, twisting and shaping them into something malevolent she could weaponize. But now, she was out of time. Instead, she focused on appealing to Julia, convincing her to let him go. Without her shade, her moral compass, she might just have a chance. “We both know life isn’t clouded with regret, need, sadness. We both know life is crystalline clear, cold, sharp.” Goddammit. He was so fucking weak. The blackness rushed up to meet her before the floor did.

The next thing she knew, Julia was helping him up off a bed in the infirmary. Oh, Q. Always a sucker for the women that he loved. Julia fed him to an actual _god_ in the hopes he would release her. Jesus fuck! She couldn’t _believe_ her luck. Added bonus: betrayal always cut the deepest when it came from those closest to you. This was going to be epic. She would rip the god’s head off and shit down his neck. Except. “You waited too long.” Her moronic jailer would rather die than let her go. Fuck fuck _fuck_!

***

He had taken her to a graveyard of old rusted out cars, crickets chirping rhythmically in the darkness. “I am so sorry. I just can’t do this anymore.” He was crying, and she never hated his human weakness more. She readied herself when he brought down a rock on the niffin box. “Alice, Quentin says go free.”

 _Finally_. She giggled at him, this broken little man who thought he could hold her, feeling her limbs and body and magic; her agency fully returned. She regarded him, knew she could kill him as easily as breathing. But, she also knew he excelled at torturing himself, and that was its own reward. She hesitated only a moment, catching his eye, before looking skyward and shooting up and away.

F

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e

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**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from an Alanis Morrisette song. Huge thanks to sullyandlulu for the betafu and encouragement <3\. Comments and kudos give me life--thanks so much for allowing me to share.


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